The Dubai carrier has switched on Crypto.com Pay for dirham-settled bookings on its website and app.
Emirates has started accepting cryptocurrency for flight bookings, making it the first major airline in the Gulf to offer digital assets as a payment option.
The airline confirmed the launch in a statement on Tuesday. The option runs through Crypto.com Pay and is live for bookings settled in dirhams on both the Emirates website and the Emirates app.
The carrier has not specified which cryptocurrencies are accepted. Crypto.com, one of the largest exchanges globally, supports more than 400 assets, among them Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, the stablecoins Tether and USD Coin, and its own token Cronos.
Adnan Kazim, deputy president and chief commercial officer at Emirates, framed the launch around a customer base that increasingly manages money and travel entirely from a phone. He said such users “expect the airlines they fly with to keep pace.”
Kazim described the target market as a digitally affluent generation, alongside travellers simply looking for more convenient ways to pay.
He also pointed to the speed of the rollout. Emirates moved from signing an agreement to launching the service in under a year, which he credited to both teams and to a regulatory environment that made the work possible. He tied the launch to Dubai and the wider UAE’s stated ambition to lead in financial technology and the digital economy.
The groundwork was laid in July last year, when Emirates and Dubai Duty Free separately announced initial agreements with Crypto.com covering booking payments.
UAE Crypto Regulation Behind the Launch
The regulatory picture is the part of this story with the widest relevance for residents.
The UAE established the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to oversee the sector’s growth and build out its infrastructure. The Dubai International Financial Centre and Abu Dhabi Global Market have separately worked to draw in investors and market participants.
Crypto.com, which is headquartered in Singapore and reports more than 150 million users across 90 countries, has operated in the UAE for years. In May, its local entity Foris Dax Middle East was granted a stored value facilities licence by the UAE Central Bank.
That licence had an immediate practical effect. It activated the company’s partnership with the Dubai Department of Finance, which allows UAE residents to pay government fees using virtual assets.
Eric Anziani, president and chief operating officer at Crypto.com, described the Emirates partnership as evidence of the UAE’s forward-looking approach to innovation.
The direction of travel extends beyond aviation. Industry executives have suggested stablecoins could be used to pay rent in the UAE within months, which would move digital assets from discretionary spending into one of the largest recurring costs residents face.
Which Other Gulf Airlines Accept Crypto Payments
Emirates is not the first carrier in the UAE to offer the option, and the distinction matters.
Air Arabia, the low-cost airline based in Sharjah, began accepting AE Coin for bookings in May last year. AE Coin is the UAE’s first stablecoin, meaning its value is pegged rather than floating, which removes the volatility question for a payment use case.
Etihad Airways has signalled interest without committing. Chief executive Antonoaldo Neves said last September that the Abu Dhabi carrier was considering crypto payments.
Qatar Airways flights can already be booked with cryptocurrency, though not directly. The transactions run through third-party travel platforms rather than the airline’s own checkout.
That leaves Emirates as the largest carrier in the region to build the option into its own booking flow rather than leaving it to intermediaries. For a market where a substantial share of passengers are expatriates sending and receiving money across borders, the appeal of settling a fare without touching a traditional banking rail is straightforward.
Whether it gets used at scale is a separate question. Crypto payments have been announced by a long list of companies over the past decade, and adoption has generally lagged the announcements. What is different here is the regulatory scaffolding. A central bank licence, a virtual assets authority and a government department already accepting digital assets for fees put the UAE ahead of most jurisdictions in making this a routine transaction rather than a novelty.
Emirates has not said whether it plans to extend the option to bookings settled in other currencies.
